In bit of Youtube buffoonery intended to make light of a serious situation, Professor Craig Evans of Arcadia Divinity College, mockingly "beats" a box with a picture of a photoshopped mummy mask attached to the surface.

This seems to be the best response he can muster against the growing number of scholars criticizing the treatment of these ancient artifacts by Dr. Craig and other scholars and non scholars attached to the Green Collection.

Perhaps the most succinct expression of this criticism was offered by Dr. Douglas Boin, a professor of history at St. Louis University in a CNN article:

"The destruction of mummy masks, though legal, falls into an ethically gray area right now because of the difficult choices scientists have to make in the lab when working with them ... We have to ask ourselves, do we value the cultural heritage of Egypt as something worth preserving in itself, or do we see it simply as vehicle for harvesting Christian texts?"http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/living/gospel-mummy-mask/

In the meantime, the Youtube video I posted -- showing Josh McDowell's callous approach to the treatment of the masks -- is making the rounds on the blogs of a few scholars who offer additional comments:

For some time now, the blogosphere has hosted occasional buzzfests surrounding an alleged 1st century fragment of the gospel of Mark.

There have been, as of this posting, no scholarly publications on the fragment, much less photos, expert dating, or any other useful information; but if you know anything about the handling of ancient artifacts, you might be disturbed by this photo, presented by Josh McDowell, purportedly documenting the process being used to "pull apart" ancient papyrus manuscripts from the presumably unimportant Egyptian mummy masks in which they are embedded. Of course, the masks themselves are completely destroyed. The process, according to McDowell, involves bare, unwashed hands and Palm Olive soap.

Now a 1st century fragment of Mark would certainly be a thrilling museum find, though, if the fragment is as small as reported, it will have a minimal effect on New Testament textual/historical studies, except to confirm what most scholars already believe - that the gospel was written within the 1st century.

And, certainly, archeology is sometimes an invasive undertaking, in which scholars must weigh the value of destroying certain artifacts in order to reach older or more historically significant artifacts beneath or inside.

But scholars are expressing a number of concerns about the way this "research" is being conducted. I'll provide links to some of their comments on the subject at the bottom of this post.

But first, you might want to take a look at this segment of a Josh McDowell video, in which he seems to delight in distressing scholars with his bare-handed approach to handling artifacts:

I was dumbfounded by McDowell's hubristic glee over the careless handling of these artifacts, and I felt the need to transcribe this excerpt:

"Now, what you do, you take this mask ... oh ... [giggle] Scholars die when they hear, but we own 'em so you can do it. You take these manuscripts, we soak them in water. There is a process we use with huge microwaves to do it, but it's not quite as good ... we take ... show it ... we put it down into water ... can you put it up here too? We put it down into water at a certain temperature, and you can only use Palm Olive soap, the rest will start to destroy the manuscripts ... Palm Olive soap won't. And you start massagin' it for about 30, 40 minutes. You'll pull it up, wring it out -- literally wring it out! These are worth millions! And then you put it back in for about 30, 40 minutes. And then you pull it out, and this is what it'll look like, just like a gob ... next one ... a gob ... it looks like a cattle ... uh ... a cow's head. But that's all papyrus manuscripts, folks. Over 2000 years old."

"And you start pulling it apart. Say what?! Yep. They're layered on top of each other. You start pulling 'em apart ... keep going .. see there? You put 'em right ..."

"See most scholars have never touched a manuscript, you have to have gloves on and everything ... [giggle] ... We just wash 'em and hold 'em in our hands. We don't even make you wash your hands before. See? This is a manuscript right there. See? A manuscript, by definition, is not an entire book; it's a portion of the book. It could just be a little piece to ... to ... we have one now that's 38 pages on Corinthians, probably greater discovery than the dead sea scrolls. And ... uh ... keep going here. This is all ... now ... see my hand up in the right hand, that's a pair of tweezers ... and you take those tweezers, and you start pulling the layers of manuscripts off."

"I was so scared the first time I did it. It was last January ... I mean I was ... er, no, it was ... little bit before then ... I was so scared bec- ... what if you tear it? And they say, well, you tear it. Since we own it, it's OK."

*** Update ***

Classics and ancient history Professor Roberta Mazza has now posted this video with interesting additional comments about the provenance of ancient artifacts on her blog, Faces and Voices:

Ferguson demolishes the apologetic claim that we have better sources for the history of Jesus than we do for Alexander the Great. He demonstrates with great clarity that, not only do we have actual contemporary eyewitness sources for Alexander (as opposed to none for Jesus), the sources are far more credible and informative than the secondary sources for Jesus.

In a recent exchange over at Exploring Our Matrix, commenters and I had a brief exchange about my statement that:

"ID is simply creationism seeking sophistication."

Of course, Intelligent Design proponents have been denying this for quite some time, though evidences such as the Of Pandas and People fiasco and the infamous Wedge document show clearly that the purpose of ID is to market religion, and that their primary focus (like most other forms of creationism) is to discredit evolutionary science in order promote theism.

There are several forms of creationism other than Intelligent Design, among them Young Earth Creationism, Gap Creationism, Progressive Creationism, and Evolutionary Creationism, which is now more commonly referred to as Theistic Evolution.

All of these forms of creationism attempt to refute evolutionary science except for one. Theistic Evolution embraces evolution and does not attempt to refute the work of evolutionary scientists - only seeks to include it in an ultimately theological worldview.

Intelligent Design Creationism is the only form of creationism whose proponents refuse the name "creationism"; and they exchange the phrase "Intelligent Designer" for "God". They have only one reason to do so. The strategy is to bypass the 1st Amendment and teach religion in public schools by masking their intentions. One would think that Christians would have qualms about deception, but apparently not ID proponents.

Fortunately, scientific organizations and academics have, for years now, rejected this lie, calling a duck, a duck.

"Intelligent Design Creationism" has become the accepted term among professional scientists for this deceptive movement to subvert the 1st Amendment and publicly taint an entire field of science. The evolutionary model for the diversity of life, in case one didn't know, is accepted and promoted by 98% of the scientific community.

In a recent post on Exploring our Matrix, James McGrath referenced an article by Alan Padgett - "Contradictions of Coiffure in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16," JSNT 20 (1984): 69–86. The article discusses the apostle Paul's view of Women's hair and head coverings, and touches on the passage's obscure reference to angels.

I'm not sure that I subscribe to Padgett's creative take on this Pauline passage, but here it is for reference:

I am not the first to post this thoughtful essay of Albert Einstein on the web. Sam Harris comes to mind, and certainly Einstein's basic premise here is echoed in Harris's The Moral Landscape.

Einstein does not deny that a logical basis for morality must at some level be derived from basic axioms, as do scientific principles. And he does not deny that axioms are, in a sense, arbitrary. But they are not arbitrary in the sense that they describe our experience (both of the universe and ourselves) in universal and elementary ways.

Science searches for relations which are thought to exist independently of the searching individual. This includes the case where man himself is the subject. Or the subject of scientific statements may be concepts created by ourselves, as in mathematics. Such concepts are not necessarily supposed to correspond to any objects in the outside world. However, all scientific statements and laws have one characteristic in common: they are “true or false” (adequate or inadequate). Roughly speaking, our reaction to them is “yes or “no.”

The scientific way of thinking has a further characteristic. The concepts which it uses to build up its coherent systems are not expressing emotions. For the scientist, there is only “being,” but no wishing, no valuing, no good, no evil; no goal. As long as we remain within the realm of science proper, we can never meet with a sentence of the type: “Thou shalt not lie.” There is something like a Puritan’s restraint in the scientist who seeks truth: he keeps away from everything voluntaristic or emotional. Incidentally, this trait is the result of a slow development, peculiar to modern Western thought.

From this it might seem as if logical thinking were irrelevant for ethics. Scientific statements of facts and relations, indeed, cannot produce ethical directives. However, ethical directives can be made rational and coherent by logical thinking and empirical knowledge. If we can agree on some fundamental ethical propositions, then other theoretical propositions can be derived from them, provided that the original premises are stated with sufficient precision. Such ethical premises play a similar role in ethics, to that played by axioms in mathematics.

This is why we do not feel at all that it is meaningless to ask such questions as: “Why should we not lie?” We feel that such questions are meaningful because in all discussions of this kind some ethical premises are tacitly taken for granted. We then feel satisfied when we succeed in tracing back the ethical directive in question to these basic premises. In the case of lying this might perhaps be done in some way such as this: Lying destroys confidence in the statements of other people. Without such confidence, social cooperation is made impossible or at least difficult. Such cooperation, however, is essential to make human life possible and tolerable. This means that the rule “Thou shalt not lie” has been traced back to the demands: “Human life shall be preserved” and “Pain and sorrow shall be lessened as much as possible.”

But what is the origin of such ethical axioms? Are they arbitrary? Are they based on mere authority? Do they stem from experiences of men, and are they conditioned indirectly by such experiences?

For pure logic all axioms are arbitrary, including the axioms of ethics. But they are by no means arbitrary from a psychological and genetic point of view. They are derived from our inborn tendencies to avoid pain and annihilation, and from the accumulated emotional reaction of individuals to the behavior of their neighbors.

It is the privilege of man’s moral genius, impersonated by inspired individuals, to advance ethical axioms which are so comprehensive and so well founded that men will accept them as grounded in the vast mass of their individual emotional experiences. Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.